


Unfinished Drabbles and Ideas

by HAL_berd



Category: Dragon Nest (Video Game)
Genre: Gratuitous lmao, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 10:31:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20619572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HAL_berd/pseuds/HAL_berd
Summary: I was digging through my google drive, and I have a lot of unfinished Dragon Nest *cough* blackgold *cough* pieces. Thought I'd just throw them out here because even though none of them are up to snuff and some of them *cough* shouldn't be seeing the light of day, it's still fun to post things.Shouldn't be seeing the light of day. By the way, that means super flowery and out of character smut lmao. Like bodice ripper grade prose.It's not all just ship trash though. Some of it is just regular trash. Hope anybody reading enjoys.(Oh yeah. Tenses are also inconsistent across drabbles. Have fun with that.)





	1. Anu Arendel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Really I just wrote towards the final paragraph. Just a thought piece based around how Velskud seemed to want to protect Geraint from political drama in his speech in Anu Arendel.

His epiphany had come with this—this foolhardy plan. The corrupted footsoldiers were passed off as disposable. Whatever hopeful pretences the strategy room had once maintained vanished the moment an especially prolific horde had approached their suffering encampment.

Geraint had been vehement in his refusal.

Reflecting on the absolute fury that had ignited in the golden swordsman’s eyes sets off an uneasy spark in Velskud. His epiphany has resolved into a realization, and that realization comes with a gnawing dread. It’s not that Geraint has never come off as an honourable man; he is perhaps the most honourable man Velskud has ever met, but this exceptionalism has him in a dark mood.

Geraint is a hero.

Velskud knows what happens to heroes.

The Warrior King Cassius had always been more of a fighter. He’d been chained to his throne, plagued by a debilitating and all-encompassing depression. A terrible ruler with excellent advisors to rule in his stead.

A hero, and he’d been corralled back under the throne despite his rapidly deteriorating mental state. A hero, and he’d had his freedom stolen away.

Velskud imagines Geraint tucked away in the Castle’s treasury like every other pretty, shiny thing that passes into Cassius II’s sights, and he can’t help but imagine that the man would sooner die.


	2. A Really Dodgy AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Idk. The idea was to have Argenta and Geraint out as pieces of the Sentinel dragon during the raid, but it never got much further than this test drive. The prose on this one just shaped up to be pretty boring, so I never continued it.
> 
> However, I did kind of play around with inbred Velskud here. It was a start.

Velskud noted with extreme annoyance that the Golden Dragon had a tendency to idly flap its wings while it observed the training men. The resultant breeze would normally be a blessing, if it weren’t strong enough to knock soldiers off their feet.

“My apologies,” said the Dragon sheepishly as it levitated the downed man back into standing position with a small finger wave. Then, with a gesture trailed by a golden glow, it dispersed the dust caked on his back and filled aching limbs with a new vigour. Velskud was familiar with this power of the dragons. He would have succumbed to his anemia long ago if not for similar interference from Pether.

The soldier took a hop back as if stung.

“Lieutenant Hawks, you have received a minor blessing from one of the Goddess’ own children,” Velskud deadpanned. “Where are your manners?”

The Dragon chuckled humorlessly. “Ser, you needn’t force the man’s tongue. After all, it was by my error that he had taken that fall in the first place.”

The men had been exhibiting an anxiety present exclusively around the Dragon’s oppressive aura and massive, hulking wings. It was bad for discipline.

“That may be so, Esteemed Golden Dragon,” Velskud stated. “If I may be so bold, perhaps it would be best if you withdrew your wings.”

The creature seemed to consider for a moment, hesitant. Velskud vaguely remembered it expressing before that a Dragon’s wings were an embodiment of their pride. Withdrawing, hiding, or, dare it say,  _ morphing _ a Dragon’s wings would be the highest dishonor, at once a denial of its very identity and a great condescension for the beholder.

With a nod, its wings shrunk down until they folded neatly underneath its fluttering scarf. With them went the heavy atmosphere that had the men fumbling their weapons.

Velskud had always thought that he could spot a dragon, even without its wings, from a league off. Pether, though he was a former human, emanated an earth-shattering strength. The Silver Dragon that often ghosted around the encampment with a cold glint in its eyes was at once the sharpest, most beastly intimidating figure on this undeserving earth and the greatest beauty in its ethereal, shimmering grace.

With its wings tucked, the Golden Dragon’s glow seemed to dim. It shared in some of its kin’s beauty, with a largely androgynous facial structure, and a figure built like a woman’s if not for the wider shoulders and flat chest, but other than that, it could almost pass as an elf, or perhaps a particularly attractive man.

With a deep bow, the Dragon once again apologized.

“I simply wished to observe,” it explained. “But it seems I have only managed to disrupt Ser Velskud’s routine. If I may once again be indulged, now that I have withdrawn my wings…?”

A truly strange one.

“The decision belongs to my men, Golden Dragon,” Velskud conceded. “Lieutenant, what say you?”


	3. More Anemic Velskud Ideas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Me trying to expand on the anemia idea but kinda failing. For one, I don't quite remember what form of anemia I had planned for him, and ultimately it felt like a pretty minor detail. I just wanted to write Velskud getting his ass whooped.

Geraint’s elbow slams into Velskud’s stomach hard enough to drop him where he stands, sword clattering on the dusty ground.

He’s deaf to the roaring cheers and boos from their little crowd of footsoldiers, because he cannot breathe. He hardly feels Geraint’s cool hand on his burning skin shaking his shoulder, because he cannot breathe. He feels light-headed. He cannot breathe.

It’s been a while since he’s fainted from his anemia, but he supposes getting the wind knocked out of him so thoroughly is an exceptional case.

  
  


He awakens first to a warm sensation spreading across his upper body. Somehow, fortunately, he’s been spared the pounding headache and chest pains, and also, miraculously, the pain of bruises that should be dotting his body quite nicely, courtesy of a long chain of sparring sessions against the swordplay equivalent of a brick wall.

The warmth then takes shape. Two points of contact against his bare chest.

He opens his eyes, groggy and irritable. He sees hands on him, radiating a soft, golden light that paints some light onto the unhealthy pallor of his skin. He traces the hands, up two wiry arms, to Geraint’s face.

The bastard has the gall to look concerned.

“...You’re...awake,” he whispers, dumbly.

Velskud snorts. “Profound.”

Geraint, now frowning, falls silent. The man has never been the wittiest, and Velskud thanks the Goddess for that small mercy, because if his tongue were as sharp as his reflexes he would conquer Altera.

Velskud coughs. “Your hands.” He would bat them away himself, but despite his lack of discomfort, his arms are still as lead by his side.

At Geraint’s lack of response, Velskud sighs. He swears the blonde possesses a ruthlessly thorough ignorance for all that is proper. Soldiers, by virtue of their occupational hazards, tend to be an affectionate bunch, but Geraint is an exception among exceptions.

“Your  _ hands _ , boy,” he says. “If you would  _ kindly  _ remove them.”

It’s not that he isn’t fond of him. If anything, he is  _ too  _ fond.

Geraint frowns down at him again, and insists, “I am healing you.”

“What is there left to heal?” Velskud asks. “My bruises and pains are gone. You are wasting your time.”

Geraint shakes his head.

“I am trying to heal your blood,” he says, brow furrowed in concentration. “It is...it is wrong, and it is not healing easily.”

Velskud allows a short bark of laughter. He’s tempted to tell him there are innumerable things “wrong” with his blood, and that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t “heal” inbreeding, but he minces his words because it’s Geraint.

“I was born like this,” he says. It takes a while to explain to him his anemia and what exactly it means for him, down to the risk in combat and the breathing issues, and by the end of it, Geraint looks devastated.

“You shouldn’t be fighting,” the man says, frantic. “It could—it could kill you—“

“A risk I’m sure no other soldier faces.”

“ _ Cease with your barbs! _ ” Geraint says, and Velskud quiets because he’s never seen Geraint so well and truly angry over his jabs.


	4. (not quite NSFW) Lmao

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was my first (!) smut attempt. Sex is a really interesting narrative tool, and I thought I was kind of barring myself from something really powerful by being so squeamish. So I decided to bite the bullet and try a little smut exercise, but try as I might, I couldn't get the language to fit right, and it petered out and got super mega cliche romance before things really got spicy.
> 
> It's also really out of character. Even if I ship blackgold, I'm pretty sure they'd never have sex, and Velskud's also probably a virgin because he's so awkward. Y'know, indoctrinated cultist and all. This was just the fandom I was in at the time, so I ran with it. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy some shippy stuff!

Maybe it was because Geraint had begun asking  _ questions _ in very non-subtle ways.

Maybe it was because they’d just gotten off of the adrenaline high of battle and the catharsis of scrubbing blood off of beaten and tender skin.

Or maybe it was because Geraint had decided that Velskud’s tent was closer and tossed himself onto the other man’s cot, two ties on his tunic scandalously undone.

Velskud had always been forced to suspect that his...inclinations had been just another result of his inbred blood, along with the crooked teeth and malformed face that were enough to drive away any man crazy enough to have similar tendencies. There had also been a period of time wherein he’d suspected Geraint was somewhat the same, what with the trespassing on that unspoken, undefined line of male intimacy that all army men could not draw, but could vaguely feel when crossed.

And the man was a Goddess-damned Faerie, Velskud had always reasoned. Womanly planes to his face, the kinds that only elvish men could carry, that ridiculous shade of sunshine blonde, eyes that were indecent in their warmth, and a figure that could most conservatively be called “child-bearing,” not to mention that faggoty float the man exhibited when prancing among the men, exerting whatever devilish, ignoble influence Faeries had on well-to-do soldiers like Velskud himself.

And then the mood would pass, and Velskud could finally admit to himself that his friend was too stupid to be so devious. Geraint was merely a fool, and he himself was a greater one for surrendering to those unwitting wiles when he was slated to betray the beautiful sod.

He heard the rustle of pages.

“It seems rather strange for a woman and a man to be married after having met for only a week,” Geraint stated, frown heavy on his tone. “I would wish to know someone for much longer before offering the entirety of my life.”

Velskud quashed the meandering train of thought that had wound around  _ we’ve known each other for at least a year _ . 

“Who knows. The rest of your life may not be as long as you think,” Velskud said in jest, if nothing else making light of a very grim fact.

Another turn of a page.

“But I would still like to avoid being so careless, lest it be much longer than expected,” Geraint replied flatly.

Strangely introspective, at least for Geraint.

“In the case of that record you’re reading,” Velskud began, gesturing to the heavy tome settled snugly between the man’s long legs, “nobility like my family tends to marry as soon as possible to ensure the fate of their progeny. What with all of the war and in-breeding, we tend not to last very long.” To see how far he’s gone, that explaining even these simple principles ceased to annoy him simply because it was Geraint.

He threw a quick look back at the man lounging on  _ his _ cot, and to his utter confusion, Geraint looked like he’d had the greatest epiphany, and it had resolved into this devastated expression he was throwing in Velskud’s direction, the tome sitting neglected between his thighs. It took him a minute to realize that Geraint had never, in their year of acquaintance, considered his friend’s death. And then it seemed extremely befitting.

“Come off it, you fool,” Velskud muttered. “With how reckless you are, you will die long before I do.”  _ And then where would I be? _

Geraint gave him a long, contemplating stare before returning to his reading, but Velskud could still see him sneaking glances. 

“Have you a woman waiting for your return in Saint’s Haven?” Geraint asked, eyes unseeing on his book.

Velskud had gotten his parents executed at a young age, thus eliminating that tradition, and given his own inclinations, he answered, “No. Not in that sense.”

Geraint turned a page, attempting in vain to seem casual, or perhaps that was Velskud’s deluded tendencies misfiring.

“I haven’t one either,” the man said in turn, and Velskud didn’t doubt it. His overbearing sister would be enough to drive any woman away, if not from fear then from suspicion.

But he humored his friend. “A fetching young man like you? It seems unlikely.”

Perhaps he’d delivered that line with more bitterness than he’d intended, because it was at that moment that Geraint gave up his hoax of reading to again stare at him. The man whispered something that Velskud could not quite hear, so he just hummed in the hopes that he could avert this strange feeling of foreboding that built as the conversation continued. 

But Geraint would not be swayed. The history tome was placed to the side as he rose from the cot, gravity now working to expose even more skin from beneath his poorly secured tunic. Velskud could only watch as he floated closer, each step more purposeful than the last, until the final paces were comparable to the pounding of his own pulse. 

“I think you are beautiful,” Geraint declared, eyes flitting and reckless with some variation of that devastation he’d displayed before. The man’s fists were tight by his side, but then his fingers were gentle on Velskud’s cheek, and Velskud almost pushed him away, indoctrinated for years against the unnatural magnetism he felt towards his own sex, and especially towards this man, but Geraint was a Faerie, and he was as erratic and wonderful and chaste as the electric brush of their lips against each other.

Geraint pulled away, and that would have been that had Velskud not felt so terribly cheated. 

He grasped the man’s wrist and caught the damn sprite before he could make off with the fragments of his dignity, yanked him so they were barely a pace apart, and demanded he explain. He didn’t know what he wanted to hear—perhaps some stuttered expression of regret, perhaps some impish smile and the sting of jest, perhaps, dare he hope, some nervous speech that proclaimed Geraint as fae as Velskud himself and ended in some declaration of affections with some preamble that they must keep it clandestine. Possibilities ran rabid in his imagination, and his only focus was his friend’s beautiful, horrible face.

Geraint looked him in the eyes, and said, bluntly, “I love you.”

Velskud dropped his wrist.

“I love you,” Geraint repeated, softer. “I must say it before you die, that I love you dearly. We have known each other for at least a year—,” and Velskud might have laughed had he not been drained so thoroughly by anticlimax, “—and you are beautiful, you are strong, you are loyal, and I love you.”

Something about how genuine his friend was made Velskud want to make light of this travesty and wave it off, or, alternatively, confess that in fact the the only accurate statements in that confession were “we have known each other for at least a year,” and, God willing, “I love you.” But, for better or for worse, his cynicism suffered a great loss that day.

“You fool,” he muttered, to his friend’s confusion. “You utter fool, Geraint.” At this point Geraint began to look hurt, so he amended, “I have loved you. I have loved you for far too long.”

Geraint’s lips lit with a smile, and whatever noxious dust he’d been sprinkling over Velskud for the past year finally won out. Velskud pulled him into a rough kiss that smashed their teeth together and jammed Geraint’s nose clear into Velskud’s cheek, and by all rights was terrible and uncomfortable and amateurish, but he was far past the point of caring. 

With fumbling hands, he shucked Geraint’s tunic the rest of the way down, until it hung docile at the man’s waist by only the belt. He could feel dexterous fingers pulling his shirt down over his shoulders and paused his own explorations to let it come all the way off. From there, the sensation of Geraint’s hands roaming hurriedly, dare he say, desperately, over his chest was enough to give him pause, make him rest his lips on the man’s bare shoulders and revel in the catharsis of getting here—finally getting  _ here _ .

It was fascinating how satisfying the sound of his partner’s breath was, now that he cared. The even pace, rise and fall, of this wondrous creature whose fingers were trailing lower and lower on his abdomen, applying an insistent pressure that begged there be no time wasted, lest Velskud drop dead within the next few moments. Some switch had been flipped in Geraint’s mind, that wooed him into barreling headfirst towards something with which Velskud was nearly certain he had no experience.

He stilled Geraint’s hand over his heart, trying to calm him down now that he’d been set off. He had to be restrained like some beast, he was so impatient, whereas Velskud—he’d been waiting, even when he’d sworn he wouldn’t, for months. Past the mists of his initial passions, he could see clearly that Geraint was steering them both towards a flat end.

“Slow down,” he said, and the hysterical body in his grasps collapsed into him, closer, as if to feel his warmth and his pulse for itself, hands be damned. Velskud held Geraint to him like this, flush against his body, flat plains slotted where they should be. It was refreshing to feel flesh with more set than yield against his chest, though Geraint was still surprisingly soft given his occupation. Velskud had always tried to find the most hardened women to fuck back in the city. Strange he would find himself making love for the first time with the most effeminate man he had ever met.

In this period of calm, Velskud’s hands occupied themselves with combing through Geraint’s hair, fulfilling that torrid fantasy that he couldn’t attempt before under the guise of friendship, and the creature in his hands breathed out shakily, breath tickling his ear.

Oh.

That was wonderful, he noted.

“I love you,” Geraint whispered, bottom lip cushioned against the stretch of jawline just below the curve of the earlobe.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” the man repeated, apparently hoping to fit several life times’ worth of heartfelt proclamations into a single night.

Each statement filled Velskud until he was brimming, but for the life of him, he could not say it back. With sore lips, he mouthed it against Geraint’s neck until he caught on and hummed under Velskud’s grip.

And then Geraint pulled the two of them back, an impish little look on his face, until Velskud had him pushed into the cot. Perhaps it spoke to how naive he thought Geraint was that the first thing question that arose was not “Is this what you want?” but rather “Do you know what's going on here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reading through it again, I realize it's also cheesy as shit with the love declarations. Shoot me; my romance needs some work, but hopefully with some more practice, I'll get better.
> 
> At any rate, yeah. The point was a Velskud with some internalized homophobia, and also sex. I kinda got the former, utterly missed the latter.


	5. (Actual NSFW) This ain't it chief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay this was the second attempt, which got a little farther. The thing is, I tend to write with overly flowery language and pretentious metaphor because I have ego problems, but that was just exacerbated by the inclusion of sex here. Enjoy the squeamish smut under all of those copious layers of cringey, flowery language. Again, out of character and gratuitous, but it's just another step on the road towards better sex writing. Maybe.
> 
> Don't worry, I swear the next drabble will have a little more integrity.

There is nothing carnal here. A dragon could not possibly desire sex in the same way that man does. Dragons do not mate. Dragons do not engage in trivial romance or lust or greed. 

Yet here he is. He stands, chest bare, lit from above by the wan light of the moon and from below with the glowing moss that cakes the floor of a shallow pond. He stands, half naked, in wait.

For sex.

He has been baffled by the scandal between sorceress and cleric, elf and mercenary, even more so by the illogical passion that could drive a creature blessed with reason to degrade itself, devolve into an animal that bites and bucks and keens. But, like all things that baffle him, sexuality draws him.

He supposes he wants sex like he wants to understand human hunger. He wants it like he wants to feel what it is like to tire from waking hours. Like he wants to understand aging. Mortality. Existentialism.

He smells his guest through scent of earth and water, and with a deflating breath, he concentrates on his wings. Morphing then away, erasing the last trace of the gold running through his veins and encased in human flesh within his chest; this is new. This is… This is strange. He watches, despondent, as scintillating feathers snap and crumble away into the dark between the moon and the moss, and his back is left feeling raw.

Bare, bare, bare. 

He wants to curl wings over his exposed self.

His guest draws near, and he tries to unravel himself from this new anxiety, this fresh dysphoria, to present himself pleasantly between the pale and alien light that presses in above and beneath him.

“Geraint, you really mustn’t enter a man’s tent while they are away. Your note may have just as easily been passed by squire or by messenger—there was no need to...“

Geraint tries his hardest to smile and tilt his head in that coquettish manner he sees the sorceresses take on when the nobles convene. His guest has gone silent.

“Velskud,” he says liltingly. “Velskud, I have need of you tonight.”

Velskud does not reply. He simply stares, eyes narrowed, but Geraint’s sharp vision scouts out the slight dilation of his pupils. He has smelled arousal on the man before, on nights with just the two of them in his tent and Geraint in a haphazardly tied tunic. He has heard his own name cried faint and stifled from behind several canvas walls. He knows Velskud wants him,  _ has _ wanted him, and right now he desires him in turn.

He reaches a hand out to the man.

“...Velskud, come,” he coaxes. “Come to me.”

A wind disturbs the surface of his pond, and he is cold. He is cold as Velskud’s shoulders draw tight with suspicion and the man takes a few steps back.

“...Who has put you up to this, Geraint?” Velskud questions with clipped voice. “Which of my men wishes to make a mockery of my proclivities?”

He shakes his head and now tries a more genuine smile. “No man wishes to make a mockery of you tonight, Velskud,” he says, soft. “But I wish for you to draw near. I wish to be near to you tonight.”

“No, you do not,” Velskud mutters. “You do not know what it means to lay with another, much less to lay with a man.”

Geraint chuckles. He brings his other arm to join the first, reaching for the man until he has the image of him caressed between two marble hands.

“Then teach me,” he coos. He has his human framed above the lines of his fingers and palms. He will have his human here. “You have taught me before. Teach me now.”

Velskud’s shoulders loosen, yes, but they slump. Why must this man be so difficult, Geraint wonders. Have they not a mutual want? Are they not alone?

“Then you,” Velskud grunts. “It is you who wishes to toy with me. Play with me and then dangle me by the danger of my sentiments. I had thought you more honorable, you fiend.”

“And I had thought you had more faith in me,” Geraint replies, ever-smiling. “Am I not placing myself under your power in that very same way? Shall we not be enthralled, not one to the other, but instead each to each other?” Of course that is ridiculous. A human cannot possess a dragon, but still he has to lure him in. He has read that it is desirable to lick one’s lips, so he does that here, because this is the killing blow, this is where he has him, “Do you not want me, Velskud?”

The man is silent.

“Am I not what you desire?” he repeats, quiet and coy, with hands withdrawing to cross over his own chest. “Do you not want to be near to me as I wish to be near to you?”

“You know your own answer.”  _ Silent _ .

He tries a breathy sigh until Velskud’s eyes are dilated even more. He beckons the man closer.

“Then come,” he whispers. “Come to me.” _ Gift me your humanity _ .

He watches his guest shuck his stained cloak and hesitantly steps forward. His tunic slackens at his waist next, at the second step. The trousers come off then, and then the smallclothes, and the effect of Geraint’s display becomes apparent. 

“You want me,” he declares, taking on playful airs again. He slides nearer until his legs dip into the water and tear ripples into its surface. 

“I want you,” Velskud affirms, and then the man slowly enters the pond. Waves crash together between them.

Geraint trembles in anticipation, and he reaches for his human again with his greedy hands as that hesitant body wanders through the water. The light from below only highlights the imperfections on the man, sharpens the crude shaping of his cheekbones, casts every point of asymmetry into stark contrast, and in that moment, Geraint hungers for him in a way distinct from his curiosity. This is his brave human, his loyal human. This is his human who had fought against his own disabilities and struggled to his position as captain of the Royal Guard. This is his human, who insists on sparring and losing, time and time again. Geraint  _ wants  _ him. Velskud approaches his legs in the water, and Geraint’s palms meet the curious asymmetry of his cheeks, capturing the feeling of the man’s shaky breath upon his wrists.

And then his hands clasp behind Velskud’s head, and he finally has possession of his human within his grasps.

“I will have you,” he says, poised to snap closed around him, winding the man further into entrapment by the tangles of his coarse hair. “I  _ will  _ have you.”

And he gazes down at Velskud with greedy eyes, examines the bloodshot white of his sclera as the features of his face draw nearer, nearer.

Velskud breaks from his hold.

Geraint blinks, wanton airs washed away with bemusement.

“Why?” he asks tonelessly. He watches the escaped man wade to the center of the water.

Velskud is firm in the draw of his brow, head raised in challenge against the dragon in man’s flesh perched safely on the banks of his pond. With a steady voice, he demands, “Get down here.”

Geraint tilts his head.

With a heavy sigh, his human repeats himself: “Get down here, you fool. You say you wish to be close to me. Show me now that you want me. Take off your damn trousers and join me in the water if you really wish to continue.”

Geraint sees his human’s eyes are hard and testing, and he considers. There is daring in mortal defiance. It lights his curiosity brighter.

He slowly undoes the sash at his waist, pushes cloth over his thighs, his knees, his calves. He can feel eyes following the motion until his trousers and smallclothes are discarded at his feet. The water from his soaked legs has made the cloth wet.

When he lowers himself into the water, the cold shock makes a thousand times worse the raw sensitivity where his wings should be, but he pushes on. The moss that glows beneath the water is slimy under the pads of his feet, and the rock below is gritty and irritating and painful, but he pushes on. He pushes on into his human’s arms and falls into his chest.

“I want you,” he concedes, shivering. Feeling rough arms fold over the burning small of his back is too intense a reminder that his human is larger than him in this form.

Velskud breathes in against the crest of his head. 

“Good.”

Geraint allows for the hand at his chin to tilt his face up, allows roaming fingers to explore the plains of his cheek and surmount the peak of his lips. He gives the hesitant appendage a lick.

Velskud snorts. “Who taught you to behave like that?”

Geraint smiles teasingly at the man. “Books, and observation.” He cocks his head. “Is it not to your liking?”

“It is unbecoming of you,” his human grumbles. “You are conducting yourself like a common brothel boy slut. I will have to recommend better reading material.”

He catches the man’s hand and frowns. “And you have known common brothel boy sluts?” Dragons are a possessive ilk. But then again, his human does not know yet that he is under ownership; he cannot fault him.

“I have never known one more than once,” Velskud replies dodgily. “And I have never really  _ known  _ any of them, in any way that matters.”

The man’s hand slips from Geraint’s grip and brushes reverently against the strands of spun gold falling over his right eye. With gentle movements, he tucks the hair out of the way, and Geraint now fixes him with the full intensity of his gaze.

“Show me what you did to them,” Geraint demands, dropping his mannerisms. “I wish to understand.”

He can hear the stutter in his human’s breath. He can see the darting of his dilated eyes.

“I will show you more,” his human pledges, tremulous hands already pulling him near. “I will show you so much more.”

And then lips crash together, discordant and painful, and Geraint relishes in the firm planes of flesh that fit together like two fragments of a single whole, and his dragon conscious revels at the muted heat that begins to rise in his human flesh, documents it, that this is lust, and it is fascinating.

He feels a hard grip running against the back of his thigh, sprinting up the cleft of his ass until he’s been lifted partially out of the water, thrust upon a pedestal of human flesh and sinew. No longer is he being pulled up into rough, crushing kisses; he is looking down, being offered up feather-light lips in tithe and tribute. His arms buckle around a brittle neck. His legs lock about boney hips.

Touches skirt over his shoulder blades, tracing over marble planes until he feels pressure on his half hard cock. He can feel a rare smile against his lips.

“I’m not sure what I expected,” Velskud whispers breathily into his mouth. “I’d thought your massive blade had been compensating for something.”

Geraint frowns. “Does it matter?”

“I would hope not,” replies his human, before their lips touch once again.

And then Velskud shifts his oral ministrations to the bare sculpt of flesh upon the neck, and Geraint feels firmer touches sliding along his cock until he’s full hard.

“How is this?” his human inquires, and he does not know, really. His mortal body seems to react in the right ways, but he himself only observes with an analytical interest. Lust, arousal, pleasure, he labels the feelings. Though he grants a small moan in affirmation, the dragon in him has so far been resistant to reciprocating the sentiments of the flesh. He is happy, fascinated, yes, but he does not, he is not—

And then their chests press together, and Velskud’s pace on his penis picks up, and his thoughts stutter.

As his flesh begins to ache for some nebulous end that eludes his greater conscious, even that higher dragon portion of his mind has suddenly become distracted by how close he is, how close he feels to the man who had long captured and held his fascination, and he begins to question the notion that dragons cannot desire sex.

He sees Velskud’s dark eyes drinking him in, lost in some heated stupor, and he leans in. He capitulates. He bends his neck down, his crown descending, until his forehead rests against his human’s, body trembling with each loving stroke of a calloused hand, at the cusp of some caustic metamorphosis that would come with a spark of fire. 

Fire. 

His human breathes fire into his lips.

The wisp of breath upon Geraint’s sensitive skin makes the greater being in him topple and melt into his flesh. He  _ wants _ . He  _ wants _ like a human should. Lust, arousal, pleasure; they escape the bounds of their labels and he  _ feels _ . He feels warm. He is burning hot. The gold in him becomes molten lava and yearns like his blood, and he, dragon and man, calls for his human, calls his name, breathlessly, Velskud,  _ Velskud, Velskud _ .

“ _ Mine _ ,” he growls into the man’s ear, too addled to bite back his tongue, and that thrill of possession wraps him closer, until the barrier between them cracks.

And the man has the audacity to whisper it back.

They are so close, that it hardly makes a difference that no man can possess a dragon. Geraint accepts him, accepts him as his possession and his thrall, and spills into Velskud’s hand.

_ Mine _ .

He pants into his human’s neck, a neck shackled in a dragon’s grip.

_ Yours. _

Velskud still holds his limp cock in his hands, still has the entirety of his body pliant in his arms, lifting his abdomen and chest above the water.

Geraint drapes himself over the man. Velskud does not lower him into the stinging cold pond. Gentle arms carry him back to his previous perch and try to place him back where he belongs, but Geraint will not let go.

“Hold me,” he requests. “Just hold me.”

“You will catch pneumonia.”

Geraint snorts and pouts. How can he catch pneumonia, when he is a dragon, and he has had so much fire breathed into him?

“ _ You  _ will catch pneumonia,” he rebukes. “ _ And  _ you will catch it harder. You will go up with me.”

“You think that wasn’t my intention?” His half-hearted tone has its own implication.

“Hold me as you go,” Geraint murmurs.

Velskud chuckles into his neck, but even that, Geraint can tell, sounds strained. Geraint can feel him.

Velskud is still hard and urgent, pressed neglected against the split of Geraint’s ass, but the man seems determined to ignore it.

“You are incorrigible,” he mutters, lips brushing against Geraint’s skin.

With one arm holding a feather light body up close to him, Velskud maneuvers the both of them onto the bank and then pries the clinging creature off his neck with patient hands.

Geraint whines, as he is laid carefully onto the ground, “Why?” 

A stiff brow tries in vain to raise in amusement. “What has you acting like a petulant child so suddenly?”

Geraint blinks, as if it is obvious. “I was so comfortable, and now I am cold.” He holds out his arms. “I want you again. Come to me.”

Velskud looks pained, kneeling next to him naked and still hard as a dog. He seems to consider it, eyes dilated as they devour the sight of Geraint laying in the grass, slippery wet with pond water and thoroughly debauched. And then he shakes his head.

“Allow me to relieve myself, and then I will hold you again,” Velskud resolves.

Geraint fixes him with narrowed eyes. “Will you not allow me to do for you what you did for me?” he asks evenly, though every inch of his body still curls in plaintive beseechment.


	6. An Actually Okay Idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Geraint and Lisa."
> 
> This was a written opening to some hypothetical long fic. It's actually...decent? Still too dense in the language and just...unwieldy, but it's one I actually wouldn't mind continuing some day.
> 
> Also, if you can't tell, I'm a huge Geraint stan. Like, he was the only thing I ever wrote about.

The forests of northern Althea mark the grave of an ancient battle. Echoes of the war drums still ring in the heartbeat of the fauna; great, thick oaks and winding ivies that have grown dark and spindly from the blood that has soaked deep into the soil. The drums still ring in the winds that dart between twisted trunks, chased by the chilling rattle of leaves. They ring in the pulse of beasts drawn to the cursed ground upon which they once sounded.

The war drums still beat, though the forest is deathly silent.

The phantom rhythm rises by the crowning of the sun, as the forest swallows the morning and recalls flashes of red and gold. The snare of trees feels then its bright core; a small thing. A gem, smoothed like river-battered stones, that shines with the triumph of a hundred battles and one, single, pivotal duel.

The oaks fence in an errant goblin. The ivies claw its throat until it is robbed of all breath. The forest gorges on its destructive energy until—

A flash of light, and the forest bows in thrall one last time. Kneeling amidst it is a single emaciated body that tries in vain to warm itself, adorned with nothing but for its great golden wings and a gilded longsword.

The war drums no longer beat in the forest.

They beat in a single heart.

_ A dragon has awoken. _

Lisa had a dog. His name was Geraint. He had a shiny golden coat and wide, round eyes. He helped her find paths through the forest to pick herbs for the potions her mother makes. He kept her from tripping on the roots of the forest.

Lisa had _ had _ a dog. He’d been missing for a week after being let out for a pee. He’d been found this morning with his eyes clawed out and a gaping hole in his chest infested with maggots.

Lisa trips on the roots of the forest.

She wipes blood from her elbows and dirt from her dress and tears from her eyes as she picks up her basket and tries to run away from where her momma is burying the carcass. She curses the monsters in the forest for Geraint’s death. She curses her momma for not finding him in time.

She curses herself for letting him out.

She wanders deeper into the forest, past all of her regular picking spots. She wanders northward. She remembers vaguely that the northern forest is where they say monsters go to die, where the trees devour orcs and goblins and flay harpies alive. She wanders on some vague notion that if she goes, she might see the terror on a monster’s face as the forest rends its flesh, and maybe then she can feel like the debt for Geraint’s life had been partially paid.

The monsters find her first.

A stone strikes bone with a sickening crack and sends her sprawling on the forest floor once more, but this time she can’t get up; her leg is bent at a nauseating angle. She holds herself and gives in to shock as two goblins stalk up to her from the shrubbery, holding clubs readied to finish the job.

She is going to die today. She is going to die like her dog.

A rattling, earth-shaking rumble rolls from the forest around, and Lisa passes out before she can see what’s attached to it. 

(She dreams of Geraint bounding out from the trees and chasing the scary goblins away.)

She wakes up and thinks, she has to be in heaven.

In her groggy stupor, the creature sitting before her is an angel. Four great golden wings kiss the ground around its knees, and sunlight wreaths its crown and spills onto its shoulders in great silky strands that frame an androgynous face. Its pale body is covered in a robe woven of scintillating feathers, and it carries a great, blazing blade. It is beautiful, she thinks. It is flawless.

“...Are...you...hurt…?” a soft voice questions her, and the forest begins to come into focus around.

She stares, dumbfounded. “I…” she croaks. Lisa looks down. Her leg is no longer broken, she realizes, and she surmises it must have been the angel.

She looks back up. With a blink, that illustrious outline resolves. The frame shrinks, cheeks sinking in, and the skin fading from pale to a mud-painted pallid, abdomen pulled taught against ribs. Sunshine tangles into mussed hair laced with fallen leaves and dirt, and the robe is more a rag than anything.

Black, chunky liquid plasters on the edge of its gilded blade, drips down the length of its bony arm, and splatters across its clothing. Its pristine wings close over its imperfections like a curtain.

“I’m okay,” she finishes, quiet. It may be dirty and starving and dangerous, but it had saved her. “Thank you.”

It rumbles then, like the rolling of thunder on the horizon, and Lisa wonders how an angel could get to be so beastly.

“Are...are you…” she trails off. Is that blood? Only demons have black blood. “Are _ you _hurt?”

Golden, bagged eyes trace down across streaks of viscous liquid. “This...this blood is not mine.”

With a skeletal finger, it points at two carcasses, one split clean through the torso, the other with its head ripped jagged from its body. Black liquid and gore pools liberally around the mangled goblins. 

With a yelp, Lisa jolts farther and farther away from the gruesome sight, and farther from this blood-splattered angel that tears flesh like a demon. The rumbling resumes, the growling of a hound, or the churring of an orc, and she moves faster to flee from this mess.

And then the rumbling trails off, and Lisa sees the vicious angel fix her with a solemn, plaintive look. It looks…

_ It looks lonely. _

“...I cannot...I _ will _not hurt you,” it says, soft as the wind against leaves. “You are...safe.”

And its wings droop. It looks so small like this, without all of the added volume, bones stripped bare of muscle and limbs stripped bare of strength. It’s shorter than any adult Lisa has ever met; it looks like the scrawny big brothers and big sisters that come knocking on her mother’s door for aid in the winter, and it had _ saved her life. _

Lisa edges closer, and the angel’s lips turn up in a tentative smile.

“You...Will you not run?” it asks.

Lisa shakes her head, uneasy but filled with conviction.

“...I will not run,” she resolves.

It chokes then, and begins to weep, smile still ghosting its lips.

As an herbalist, Melyssa has a latent concern for her daughter’s health. However, in the field of mental humors, she is lost about this imaginary angel friend that Lisa raves about that lives out in the forest and always needs food, but she packs an extra meal for the girl anyways. She knows Lisa is resilient, but the loss of Geraint…

Melyssa can admit she’d shed a few tears for the dog that day too. Geraint had been a loyal dog, and a needed presence in her largely empty home. She wonders if the loneliness has gotten to her daughter’s stability.

With a peck on her little daughter’s forehead, she passes her the basket.

“Thyme, and some Silverweed for Ms. Sila’s tea, wild poppy if you can find it—we aren’t low, but Priscilla next door is seven months and we mustn’t risk it,” she rattles off, and Lisa nods attentively. “I swear something must be wrong with our garden; nothing’s been growing. Oh! Oh yes, pukeweed as well.”

Lisa’s little brow furrows in concentration. “Is that… Is that past the river north?”

“Yes, but, do not cross the river. That’s too far in to go alone,” Melyssa reminds her daughter. “Pukeweed only if you can find it south of the river.”

Lisa’s eyes sparkle. “Momma, don’t worry, even if I go out far, the angel will protect me.”

And this is where this delusion gets potentially dangerous. She levels Lisa with a stern look. “No, past the river is still too dangerous, I forbid you go,” she says. Then, at Lisa’s drooping expression, she sighs. “Besides, past the river is for ten year old girls. You know the rules, dear.”

At this, the girl pouts. “But Momma, that’s so _ far! _”

“Four years will pass in a flash, dear, trust me,” Melyssa coos. After all, four years had almost been nothing before that bastard had wandered off. She shakes her head and gathers her little girl into a crushing hug. “Do not stray from the path.”

“Yes, Momma.”

“If you meet the patrol, walk with them.”

“Yes, Momma.”

She pulls back and holds her daughter’s eyes, solemn.

“Do not cross the river, yes?”

Lisa smiles. “Yes, Momma.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

With that, she lets the girl go off into the world.

When Lisa gets to the place she’d marked with river glass, she looks both ways for passersby and then skips off the path.

“Ser Swordsman!” she calls. “Ser Angel!”

A resonating hum returns her call, and she follows it to a clearing bathed in sunlight. Now that he’s cleaned himself and picked the dirt from his clothing, she can say with confidence that he is a holy creature. Kneeling next to the pond with eyes fluttered closing, chirping along with birdsong while wan morning rays light a halo on his golden hair; she’s certain she’s never seen an animal so beautiful.

“Ser Angel,” she says, as he turns and opens his eyes. “Ser Angel, I have preserved ham today, and a book for you!”

“A book?” he questions


End file.
